Posts by ma1010

GDPR violation?

Earlier this week, it emerged Facebook was using people's cellphone numbers, provided for two-factor authentication, to target them with adverts, even though the numbers were only provided for security reasons rather than ads.

If this is true, it sounds like a massive GDPR violation to me, although I'm no lawyer, so I could be wrong.

If it is a violation, I'm hoping some folks in Europe manage to get a big GDPR case going against FB. Four percent of their global turnover would amount to quite a bill! And they so richly deserve every penny of it.

Icon 'cause FB (and just about every other big corporation) have about the same scruples as Blackbeard. If only there were some sort of regulation of these rapacious corporations here in America!

It's just plain ILLEGAL

Companies in California and throughout the nation are entrusted with customers' valuable private information. This settlement broadcasts to all of them that we will hold them accountable to protect their data.

That's damn right, Uber! You can't GIVE away customers' valuable private information. You have to SELL it on to as many useless assbags as possible who will use it for endless spam and "targeted advertising" instead!

What was that about data protection laws that say you can't just sell everyone's data? Yeah, that's some sort of European thing, maybe, but no such limits here in the USA!

Many people have basically lost the use of telephones

I feel the pain of everyone on here. I get tons of crap calls all the time. My landline is muted, and I just use it for outgoing calls. Like some others, I use software on my cell. It has Extreme Call Blocker which I have set to send any call not in my address book to voicemail. It's a pain in the ass that we have to put up with this to avoid answering 15+ crap calls a day, but that's how it is Livin' in the USA.

If the Democrats (or anyone else with the slightest credibility) want to take over the country in the next elections, they could do so if they had a proposed program to fire that cunt Pai and actually REGULATE the Internet and Telecoms providers in a way that would benefit the PEOPLE for a change. But I know this is just fantasy.

First prize is one device with Alexa-on-a-chip

Second prize is two devices with Alexa.

If I ever buy something with this (which I would only if there is no other choice), it sounds like I need to use MAC address filtering on the Wi-Fi.

What did you expect?

As long as Big Telco's hollow little sock puppet, Ajit Pai, is running the FCC, there will be nothing but more subsidize-big-corporations-and-screw-the-citizens bullshit from them. This move is exactly in line with everything else that Pai has done from day one. He's an ass-sucking sycophant of Big Telco and the sworn enemy of everyone else in America. Probably the single worst appointment Trump ever made.

ADA!

(Screaming loudly, banging head.) You guys are giving me a PTSD flashback to when I did my MSc. back in the early 90's. We were required to use Ada for our final project and to take a course in Ada beforehand. We had '386 computers at home and work, and they all ran Windows 3.1. We also had a really funky Ada compiler which was all we students could afford to buy at the time. It had the wonderful ability to compile code that ran fine on the computer you compiled it on, but would not run on any other computer. Given that one of our instructors insisted that we turn in everything as an executable (as well as source code, of course), we had a wonderful time getting downgraded when the executables, which ran fine on our computers at home, failed to run on his. Somehow I managed to get an "A" out of him, but I never worked harder or had more stress in any class.

If anyone else out there is using Ada, I sure hope you have a better compiler than we did!

Another miscreant who blocks password managers

21st Century Insurance. Wankers.

Fools like this should pay

Idiots who think it's funny to make hoax threats shouldn't be put in jail. Instead let them pay civil damages equal to the cost of all the emergency responses they generated. If he gets a good job, it shouldn't take him more than 100 years or so to settle the bill while he lives on subsistence.

Hmmm

Did somebody say "Streisand Effect"?

This just underscores that patents are crap

Our current patent system is beyond broken. It doesn't protect or foster innovation, but rather stifles it. This particular instance probably hasn't been a major loss for the world, but how many individuals and small companies don't even bother to TRY these days? If I had a great idea for some invention, given the minefield of patent law and patent trolls out there, I'd most likely just say "screw it" and go fishing or something, because likely some assbag imagined something vaguely like it and filed a patent on "thing that does stuff."

It's a marvel that any innovation at all happens in today's toxic environment. I expect there will be less and less until they fix patent law. Patents should be issued ONLY for WORKING devices or manufacturing processes, not for vague ideas like "oh, you know, we could do some kind of Internet sex thingy, I think" and other such "business method" patents.

Death to patent trolls!

The article is right, but...

I'm sorry, but I'm extremely opinionated and partisan (like most Americans, I guess). I despise that little sock puppet of big telco which are screwing over hundreds of millions of Americans, providing mediocre to poor service at nosebleed prices. He doesn't even PRETEND to give a shit about American consumers or anything that would benefit them if it costs big telco a dime.

As far as I'm concerned, if they brought Pai up on witchcraft charges, I'd cheer. Anything to get rid of that miserable assbag.

Experian CHARGED them?

I can't figure out why anyone paid Experian for this information. After all, Experian GAVE AWAY my personal information (along with that of millions of others) because they didn't have enough sense to patch a known vulnerability.

In the US, our alleged public guardians immediately swung into action, giving Experian a resounding "Now, now, don't do it again until next time!" No fine or other penalties, of course.

The BOFH has seen this before

SALESDROID: "Well, that would be version one. But we promise that version 1.1 would have perfect performance, no lag, and so secure it'll seem like magic."

BOFH: "You're lying aren't you?"

SALESDROID: "Of course, I'm in sales!"

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Just say NO

To Facebook in any incarnation! I have never had a FB account and would much prefer that they not know I exist, much less have my bank sell them any information of any kind about me.

Who needs FB for alerts? If my bank account gets too low, my credit card too high, or I'm getting close to forgetting to send a timely payment, I get alerts via email. Those work just fine, thanks, without anyone (well, except for the government spies, of course) slurping my data. (And, no, I don't use GMail.)

So, it's the same over there, then?

It seems Whitehall works about like D.C., then. Get a powerful government position (either in the bureaucracy or elected), use it to your corporate sponsor's advantage, and they will reward you later on with a nice, lucrative job.

Wondering what job Big Telco has waiting for their little sock puppet Ajit Pai (just to mention one of many such shills).

I like Fastmail

I've used Fastmail ever since Bluebottle went out of business. It works very well, and, AFAIK, they don't read all your email like Google and such. The price is very reasonable and more than worth it for the privacy. As they say, if it's free, then YOU are the commodity.

The stupidity of "business method" patents

How to get rich in the US? Just use your imagination. Make something up! File a vague patent on some general idea. Then do absolutely NOTHING to make that idea actually work. Instead, wait for someone else to have the same (usually obvious) idea and spend a lot of money and time to make that idea into a reality the public can actually benefit from. Then sue those productive people because you did absolutely nothing to develop "your" idea.

Fsck this bugger and ALL patent trolls. May they burn in hell! Patents should only apply to something the claimant made actually WORK, not vague ideas anybody can think up or (as another poster pointed out) steal from SF movies or books.

OneDrive

Don't know how much this applies to other OneDrive users, but where my wife works, they've implemented Win 10 and OneDrive, taking away their network shares. The folks in the office refer to OneDrive as the "Black Hole" because they've had lots of files disappear there. Sometimes they get them back later, sometimes not. They've gotten in the habit of keeping their critical files on USB sticks now so they can actually get them when they need them.

I suppose it's a good thing for some, but personally, the more I hear about cloud, the less I like it.

Security? We've heard of it.

If the info at the F*book conference was all that special, one would think they'd have better vetting of attendees and not just allow someone from "BogusCo, Inc." to attend.

If the allegations are true, what Huawei did was wrong (although I'm not certain it was illegal), but I have to wonder how "secret" was this information they allegedly purloined.

You're Lord Bong, and I claim my 5 quid!

I think we now know where Steve Bong wound up after he left the U.K., now living under the assumed name Phil Chen.

Will the new phones feature "Thinkfluence Design," also?

Watch those EULAs

Obligatory Dilbert here.

From El Reg's mouth to $DEITY's ear

It is just one more sign of a dangerous ramping up of rhetoric on both sides of the political divide, and one that you would hope federal officials would seek to dampen down rather than actively encourage.

Please!

Huh?

In 2015 Roberts was ordered to pay the Australian tax office AU$1.5m

Interesting. He must have had a very lucrative income from somewhere, probably not (overtly, anyhow) drug related in order to get a tax bill like that. Pretty good wages for a "bikie."

Aaaaaaaand, YES, the big corporations skate again!

This is today's life in these United States: the big corporations can do whatever they like to consumers, and they will pay bugger all penalties for it. The MINIMUM they should have gotten is a very large fine and be required to provide credit protection FOR LIFE to every single person whose details were divulged.

Unfortunately penalties for this sort of thing will never happen because today the U.S. is a Government Of the Corporations, By the Corporations and For the Corporations. The people? They're just consumers to be slurped and ripped off any way the corporations like.

Sorry if I sounded a bit cynical there.

</old git>

Will this actually stop them selling our movements?

In this article, the author said that all the major oligopoly carriers like Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, et al., stopped selling our movement details after the letter from the senator. However, in the article yesterday, I recall only Verizion saying they would stop while T-Mobile seemed to not care.

Will this court decision stop them from selling our private information now? I certainly hope so. Where we go, what web pages we look at, emails and texts we send should be private and never divulged by any carrier to anyone without a warrant, IMHO.

Paris, because I'm curious.

Monopolies and Oligopolies

And not only do monopolies buy out small startups, they sometimes also use patent-troll type lawsuits to destroy them if they won't knuckle under to the buyout. The problem is, thanks to mergers, we have fewer and fewer options all the time. When it's not a monopoly, it's an oligopoly. What difference, from the consumer's point of view, is there between AT&T and Comcast? It's like being allowed to choose between getting you throat cut and being beheaded - either way, the outcome won't be good. If you don't like one, switch to the other - ha-ha.

This is the way of the future, it seems. The only possible remedies I can see would involve legal ones, but since the big corporations pretty much own the government (see Ajit Pai, big telco's sock puppet chairman of the FCC), I don't see much hope there.

Listening to AT&T and Uber?

As a resident of California, I would prefer my elected officials to be guided by the advice of more wholesome entities, say NAMBLA or the Russian Mob.

Damn tracking and trackers!

I'm getting to the point where I keep my phone in airplane mode more and more. Makes it difficult to contact me, but you can't have everything. We've pretty much lost the use of phones, cells or landlines, for their intended purpose unless you submit to endless spamming and/or tracking. I don't.

It would be nice if they would outlaw tracking people via phone unless they're using 911 for an emergency call or there's a law enforcement reason (with a WARRANT granted upon a show of probable cause to a court) for it. But for those like me, living in the USA, there's no hope of anything being done by our useless lawmakers because that would benefit the people at the expense of the big corporations, so it's a non-starter here. Maybe some states might do something, perhaps.

It won't be the marketing department of Sirius Cybernetics first up against the wall when the revolution comes. It will be these bastard trackers and their "targeted ad" people. The sooner, the better, I say.

Google Translate apparently works offline now on mobile phones

"My hovercraft is full of eels."

What?